You have a golem and you have a persona that it can wear. But after thinking things over, you decide to change your plan slightly.
You text one of the golems that you have placed at the high school. Bring me _____ after school, you tell it, naming the next person you have decided to replace with a doppelganger.
In the meantime, you turn the page to the seventh spell in the book. It was a spell that unlocked as soon as you had finished making the vinctus.
It uses the same ingredients as a golem, mixed in the same way. One ingredient at a time you add them to the metal bowl balanced on the sigil. Saltpeter, charcoal, sulfur, resin, gasoline (though kerosene and motor oil also work, you have found), nitric acid, camphor, and a handful of dirt taken from a graveyard. After the addition of each, you run a fingertip once around the sigil. The result is a black, smelly liquid.
The first time you executed the spell you were very careful to follow the directions exactly. After making up the stuff, you put a flame to it. It burned very purple and very bright for a few seconds, then went out, leaving a much thicker kind of paste behind. At this point, the page turned loose, and you found the rest of the instructions on the other side.
You followed those directions and painted the interior of a mask, turning it the color of tar. It hardened almost instantly. Then you laid a hank of your own hair inside the mask, and set it on fire. The entire interior of the mask caught fire for an instant, and went out. The hair was gone, and the interior of the mask had turned a mottled gray—the same color as a golem.
The fourth time you executed the spell, you messed up. You added the hair with the other ingredients before setting the contents of the bowl on fire. The result was a paste, but instead of being black, it was gray. At first you thought you'd messed up. But you tried it anyway, painting the inside of a persona. You found that the results were the same, and persona prepared one way will act like a persona prepared the other way.
Since then you have taken to using the second method, which yields a paste that you can store in a plastic container and carry around with you. It's much more convenient that way. You unpacked a saved supply of the stuff now.
It's some hours before the high school lets out, which you occupy by making another persona and mens, which you attach to each other after sealing. It's around four when the golem you contacted—one of the basketball players; very popular at the school—arrives with the victim you directed it to bring. They are just inside the door when you spring at them with the blank persona. "You don't waste time, do you, boss?" the golem says. (Golems like to call their masters "boss," you have found.)
With it's help, you drag your unconscious victim into the living room, to prop them on the sofa, to wait. Ten minutes later, when the mask comes out again, you sit at the foot of the sofa with a brush and the paste that you had made. It takes only a minute or so to coat the interior of the newly made persona with it. Your victim's name is not obscured by the paste, however, but continues to shine inside the mask, seeming to float just above the surface, like a hologram.
You blow the stuff dry—though it is already dry to the touch—and turn it over and set it on the sleeping face. It seems to sink in. But there's no change in form, for the persona is of the person lying on the sofa.
But it is no longer that person. It is a golem.
Or, technically, according to the Libra, it is a ludius.
The thing opens its eyes and sits up. "What the fuck?" it gasps.
Of course the thing doesn't know what has happened. It only knows what the original person knew, and the original has no idea what is going on.
So you explain to the ludius the change in its circumstances. It is now your servant (like a golem) that has to do what you tell it to do (like golem). After some explanations and exhortations, you convince it that it is pleased to be one of your servants.
Then you tell it to get undressed. It smiles, and complies.
While it is disrobing, you fetch the persona of yourself that you made. Inside it you paint a layer of the stuff you made, creating another ludius. Back in the living room, you push the other ludius back onto the sofa and remove the persona by grasping it by the forehead and pulling while chanting a string of syllables fast three times. The original person appears—though there is no obvious physical change—and onto their face you press the mask of yourself. Your own face and form appear, and your doppelganger sits up smartly. "Whoa. Again?"
"Change of plans." You tell your double who you have decided to replace.
You then strip, and your double changes into your clothes. Again, it is like a golem, doing as you order, and is pleased to be your servant. But your victim is hidden underneath your face, unconscious, and will know and remember nothing should you ever remove your face from theirs and let them free again. After you are stripped, you drop onto the sofa, raise your latest mask to your face, and push it in.
It is ten minutes before you wake, and you're groggy enough to be surprised when you look down and see your new body. It takes you a moment to remember who you are supposed to be. You give your replacement some last-minute instructions as you dress, then leave to let that basketball player take you out. It will be some hours before the memories start to come (it's always that way with masks, with you) but the golem is one of the best friends of the person you are now impersonating, and is able to fill you in on some necessary details. You are out until late that evening, killing time before going home to sleep, during which you will master the full impersonation.
That seventh spell might be the best of all. It's like a portable golem, already inside a mask. All you have to do is pop it onto someone, and they will turn into a copy of the person inside the mask. But they will be asleep, and the masked personality—a slave to the person whose hair is inside the mask—will take over. But if it's your hair in the mask—as it is in this case—you will be awake and inside the mask, and able to carry on the impersonation. Even better, if you put the mask onto the person you copied, after filling it with the ludius-paste, they will also go to sleep beneath it, leaving their own duplicate to fill their place while under your command.
"Just be sure to use real hair," Will Prescott warned you once. "And don't use any hair off a fake—off a golem or anything like that," he explained. "That hair evaporates when it's inside a mask—or inside a golem for that matter—and though it will still make a golem, it won't obey you. It might even ... Well—"
He had turned a little shy at that point, and declined to say what worse thing could happen if it was fake hair and not real hair that went into a golem, a vinctus, or a ludius.
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